There must be quite a few around… including hanging out in various odd places… the French used it as the method of execution for a long time, into the 1960s I think… and they used it in their colonies.

In the US, it’s the opposite. Since 2000, real wages (adjusted for inflation) have declined. The White House even touts this horrid statistic in its paper, Investing in America: Building an Economy That Lasts.

Clearly, the paper is not intended for the rank and file. It outlines how current policies are making America competitive with low-wage countries like China. And one of the principal strategies is … lowering wages.

But don’t worry, li’l voters, he LOVES you, he really, really LOVES you … as long as you let him and his friends ratfuck you without complaint.

I see some of the news media I have on the sidebar have “detached” themselves…. first Press TV, then Real News and now McClatchy…. so I have to check and see what is happening. I want all 4 back… I’ll open the link the Occ site provides and see if I can manage it…

Gah. WP plug-ins for the sidebar were pretty easy… one reason I could manage anything.

Walker, the focus of a massive recall effort, received tepid applause and some boos when he was introduced to read the state proclamation honoring King. Unlike last year, he offered no personal remarks.

While the majority of the two-hour program stayed tightly focused on celebrating King, some moments turned political.

The crowd erupted into loud and prolonged cheering when the guest speaker, Sherrilyn Ifill, a University of Maryland law professor, said King would have been against “onerous requirements” that require citizens to show government-issued identification to vote. King rallies in South Carolina and Georgia Monday also focused on such laws, with speakers criticizing them as attempts to suppress the black vote.

Walker, who signed a controversial voter ID law in May, sat stoically through the speech. He exited quickly at the event’s end, trailed by a couple of protesters who were stopped by security as they yelled, “Shame! Shame!”

Yet Walker critics said it would have been an insult to King’s legacy to ignore his anti-poverty and pro-union work at a time when Wisconsin is split politically over such issues as the ability of public sector workers to collectively bargain. King was shot to death April 4, 1968, while in Memphis to support sanitation workers trying to organize a union for safer working conditions.

“That’s what he died for — to empower the working man,” said Katy Reeder, 54, of the town of Middleton. She held one end of a large banner in the Rotunda with this King quote: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

The most-active protesters — about two dozen — kept to the Rotunda area on the ground floor. The ceremony was one level up on the first floor. They turned their backs when Walker read the King proclamation and briefly yelled, “Shame! Shame!”

Ifill, a former NAACP staff attorney who litigated voting rights cases, said King never stopped educating and challenging himself. That’s why he didn’t stop with the success of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 but turned his attention more forcefully to poverty, employment injustices and opposition to the Vietnam War.

The crowd became increasingly spirited and vocal as Ifill built a case for why King would have been against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, predatory banking practices and “unlimited corporate greed” and on the side of “workers struggling to receive a fair wage.”

She capped her speech with the voter ID issue, although she never mentioned Wisconsin’s law specifically. She said King fought against poll taxes and literacy tests and would have responded similarly to voting laws that “require a government-issued ID.”

In an interview later, Ifill said she had no qualms about bringing up the issue.

“King was not a cipher, he was a real man,” she said. “I needed to stay truthful to who he was.”

England endured a torrid first day of their Test series against Pakistan as they were bowled out for 192, with off-spinner Saeed Ajmal taking 7-55.

After winning the toss, England slumped to 43-5 in a pulsating opening, before Matt Prior (70) lessened the damage.

Despite the Dubai pitch offering little turn, England could not cope with Ajmal’s variations as five batsmen fell lbw and none of the top six passed 24. Pakistan underlined their supremacy by cruising to 42-0 at the close.

The ease with which Pakistan openers Taufeeq Umar (18) and Mohammad Hafeez (22) dealt with England’s attack rounded off a chastening day that underlined just how difficult it will be for Andrew Strauss’s men to hold on to their number one status in a year featuring three away series against sides from the subcontinent.

Their vulnerability against spinners was brutally exposed as Ajmal – whose figures were the best of his career – effortlessly took apart a batting order that had spent much of the last year battering the cream of India and Australia into submission.

…them “battering the cream”, there. And all.
Tho NO decent English speaking sporting piece is complete without an MII6-style classified case-file, like we do here in the U.S., a profile of key players, a dossier if it weren’t so Frenchy.
Haven’t they heard of a roster? :wink;

Oh, here it is, with high value intelligence , I’m sure –
if we only knew what the Hell it meant. Eyes Only.
There is analysis attached.

In truth, Ajmal was assisted by some dismal shot selection from the specialist England batsmen, with only Ian Bell truly blameless in his downfall.

England’s team selection will come under scrutiny as well after they opted against picking Monty Panesar as a second spinner to back up Graeme Swann.

The strategy contrasted sharply with that of their opponents, whose captain Misbah-ul-Haq introduced the first of his three spinners as early as the sixth over and was instantly rewarded as Alastair Cook tried to cut a Hafeez ball that was too close to him and got an edge through to wicketkeeper Adnan Akmal.

Jonathan Trott looked in good touch as he peppered the boundary three times early on, but a leg glance off Aizaz Cheema grazed the edge of his bat and the catch was athletically taken by Akmal.

The arrival of Ajmal in the 19th over swiftly brought about the departure of the rest of England’s top order as the off-spinner produced a devastating spell of three wickets for five runs in five overs before lunch.

“An off-spinner like Saaed Ajmal takes some looking at and getting used to but an off-spinner from England, while they’re all pretty and nice, they’re not mysterious.

They call that analysis? HA! With this unintelligible drivel,
they will NEVER catch up to us!. This is huge. And the clock is their enemy. This is a see-saw game, see. a real nailbiter, a pressure cooker. And in pundity, they can’t get the ball in the basket. It’s a whole new ballgame, and they haven’t even electrified the crowd..
They should stick to the fundamentals,dig deep, and suck it up or, at this rate, they’ll never get to the next level:
setting up child-rape covering Foundations with tax advantages.

Morgan survived to add 39 with Prior as England clawed their way towards the 100 mark, but just when the Dubliner was starting to look comfortable against the spinners he took a wild thrash across the line to Ajmal and was out leg before.

Stuart Broad survived an lbw appeal off his first ball, with Pakistan’s review unsuccessful, but when he was trapped again 13 balls later even the DRS system could not save him as England slumped to 94-7.

With Prior playing steadily at the other end, Swann took on the role of the aggressor as he and Prior added 57 for the eighth wicket.

Prior batted with discipline and restraint, taking 87 balls to score his first boundary, before opening up after England lost their eighth wicket.

He reached his 19th Test half-century off 115 balls in a chanceless knock but ran out of partners as Chris Tremlett and James Anderson were trapped in front to become the sixth and seventh victims of Ajmal’s memorable haul.

::Swann’s off-spin was also given short shrift, with Hafeez nonchalantly lofting his second ball :shock: over mid-off for four to round off a triumphant first day for Pakistan.

Well, whatever they’re doing, all this nochalantly lofting of the second ball over mid-off for four to round off , I must admit, has me a little…curious. I mean, the nonchalance alone!

Well , Prior is a restraint. I think. Playing steadily at the other end, He reached his 19th Test half-century off 115 balls in a chanceless knock but ran out of partners.

LOL. I laughed all the way through.
It was like taking that first toddler-at-tee ball PILL
–> What are these people talking about?
This is fucking ridiculous! Sorta just….
Swing a stick! Run around!
And very important!. – > REPEAT WHAT THEY”RE SAYING!:lol:

And I am so relieved we have a pretzel who can pronounce “nuclear”… we all sleep so much better. – mcat

Yes, the Sullivatio –
I saw it, too. :lol::wink: I tried to look away.
But what Andrew can do with a mouth, some mucous, and a butthole is quite incredible.

Nothing in his first term —including the complicated multiyear rollout of universal health care— can be understood if you do not realize that Obama was always planning for eight years, not four. And if he is reelected, he will have won a battle more important than 2008: for it will be a mandate for an eight-year shift away from the excesses of inequality, overreach abroad, and reckless deficit spending of the last three decades. It will recapitalize him to entrench what he has done already and make it irreversible.

Yes, Obama has waged a war based on a reading of executive power that many civil libertarians, including myself, oppose.

And he has signed into law the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial (even as he pledged never to invoke this tyrannical power himself). But he has done the most important thing of all: excising the cancer of torture from military detention and military justice. If he is not reelected, that cancer may well return. Indeed, many on the right appear eager for it to return.

Sure, Obama cannot regain the extraordinary promise of 2008. We’ve already elected the nation’s first black president and replaced a tongue-tied dauphin with a man of peerless eloquence.

::

If I sound biased, that’s because I am. Biased toward the actual record, not the spin; biased toward a president who has conducted himself with grace and calm under incredible pressure, who has had to manage crises not seen since the Second World War and the Depression, and who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name….

In future appearances, Sullivan should just face the viewing audience with his hairy ass spread wide, his sphincter in unmistakable close-up for the camera.
No one will notice.NITM or should, besides – Plenty of others will be on view, varying only in hirsute degree, tho none more lubricated.

Yes, you know i thought of that ridiculous line from Sean Penn just the other day. MY mouth dropped open when he let off that bullshite at some Academy Awards (wasn’t it?)

All his peacocking around Haiti and whereever else… and he slobbers over the cut of Slob’s Hart Schaffner and Marx soft shoulder suits. Which, even custom made, probably don’t go higher than a couple thousand – and probably less..

United Wisconsin, the organization formed to recall Walker, turned in a total of 1.9 million signatures, a number than includes 845,000 to recall Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and more than 21,000 signatures apiece for Republican Sens. Pam Galloway of Wausau, Van Wanggaard of Racine and Terry Moulton of Chippewa Falls.

Earlier in the day, leaders of the effort to recall Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald filed 20,600 signatures with the state elections agency.

“The collection of more than 1 million signatures is a crystal-clear indication of how strong the appetite is to stop the damage and turmoil that Gov. Walker has caused Wisconsin,” said Ryan Lawler, United Wisconsin co-chairman. “In the dead of Wisconsin winter, an army of more than 30,000 Wisconsin-born and -bred volunteers took to the streets, the malls, the places of worship and dinner tables to take our state back.”

Walker was in New York on Tuesday, attending a fundraiser. Ciara Matthews, his campaign spokeswoman, said he was “completely booked for the day” and unavailable for comment. But the governor did make time to speak to conservative radio hosts Charlie Sykes and Rush Limbaugh.

During the Limbaugh interview, Walker warned of recall “shenanigans” and said recall organizers have gotten “tons of money from the big government unions in Washington.”

He said his campaign would go through the process to review and challenge signatures believed to be fraudulent. And he said that if “given the truth,” voters will back “people who do what they say they are going to do.”

The governor predicted he would emerge from a recall race victorious, and said he thought the situation in Wisconsin would “send a powerful message” through statehouses across the country and in the halls of Congress.

Still, observers did not expect the sheer number of signatures his opponents were able to collect. During the 2010 election, he received 1.12 million votes. The total collected in for recall is about 46 percent of the total number of voters in the 2010 gubernatorial race.

“There is no challenge — both legal or otherwise — that will prevent these elections from going forward,” said Mike Tate, Democratic Party of Wisconsin chairman. “Scott Walker is going to be recalled.”

There is an article over at Cpunch on the retrenchment in AZ… and the increasing racial divide.

Down a ways is this:

[A]cross the Arizona border in California, we are witnessing a related transformation that is different in its details, subtler, and less openly racist. There are no Sugiyamas, Hornes, or Huppenthals, the henchmen of the Arizona Tribunal.

But throughout the University of California and Cal State systems invisible technocrats are slowly destroying the public university and converting it into a corporate bastion where students from California are displaced by foreign students (who pay more), where students are “taught” in classes of 900 people, and where faculty are forced to become “entrepreneurs”–a fancy word for academic panhandlers.

At UC San Diego (UCSD), campus leaders recently published their three top priority areas for the future–all of them had to do with creating products for the market. The word “education” was not mentioned once. Academic areas that emphasize history and critical thinking are either shrinking or becoming a parody of themselves. The push for on-line education is strong–no need to interact with real students. We simply sell them virtual courses and have underpaid graduate students grade the work.

Administrators brag that UCSD is no longer a California university; it’s an international university—this in a state that will be majority Latino by the year 2040.

As costs go up (more than a 300% increase at the UC system over the last decade), working class and youth of color will slowly be denied access. The few that make it in will have to take on serious debt to finish. The future? – Education for the already privileged and for a few tokens. Education as preparation for the job market. Education as the site of corporate-driven research. Education to train elites from around the world. No more critique of the status quo. Minimal engagement with local populations. A ban on critical pedagogy in the classroom. No interest in teaching strategies that empower youth, especially those who do not already arrive with an abundance of social and economic capital. ….

Known throughout history to stop Revolutions cold.
(Sigh} You knooow, a few dunning letters and Lenin and Trotsky would have caved. Surely Fidel, a lawyer himself, would have seen the gravity of the situation and not rolled into Havana. LOL.

::

Well…….about these Hedge Funds, and.the whole “private banking”.shtick – it is nothing BUT shtick, I mean, this ain’t Really built with Rothschild money, Or Vanderbilt or DuPont money or any of that old enough and enough of it / sharp-enough-to-hold-on-to-it “new” money, and that would include the Rockefeller’s though the likes of Uncle Warren and Bill Gates. All their holdings are enhanced by this “Go Forth and Find Another Sucker” deal, where the trust departments at bigger banks back in the day, and then the regionals, went about finding more profit in the lesser lucred…

Sorry. Tryin to avoid the stemwinder, :lol: but how has this played out? Well, it’s pretty fair to say that over the last 20 or so of the same moneygrubbing Eureka! trend, that we’ve arrived all wifey’s Architectural Digest on the cocktail table to see every internist or dentist with a membership to some corn-pone golf club with the dust-bowl fairways …became become both mark and feeder fund recruits..

As near as I can figure it, there are whole half wit:lol: fuckloads of people out there who have been enlightened, emphasis lightened, on everything from – psst – the Google/ NASA/ Disney/ Lockheed Martin/Frito Lay MERGER, keep it to yourself to tax evasion in Oomquala to squeeze-box expense writeoff schemes all of which have been peddled through these networks of shysters and CPA’s and local broker-shmokels inevitably just a dry-cleaning brother-in-law or college-roomate away from being right there with “the players” in “the space” (::market segment) , LOL : a Wall Street boiler room full of 28 year olds.

And now , the real treat for the shmuck dentist tipped to the new, empty-waiting-room world where people go without teeth , someone at the hedge fund just flew off with their retirement money to Israel or faked their death, or committed suicide, or were said to be thinking of doing so after contemplating the prospect of being bonus-pounded in their jailed ass
So it’s hard to get their guy on the phone.
Keep trying. Business in Europe, you know.

I wonder how many of these upper middle middling uppers at the faculty lounge, or the benefit, or wherever and with whatever ruse they like to think of themselves associated with, I wonder how many have figured out yet how bad they got beat.
Afterall, the Hedgefunds may sue! is another liquidation scheme itself, about as lame as it gets.
Send all collection notices – now write this down – you know –
to Global Rioters P.O. Box _______..
And if you’re a Greek bondholder, hell, just put Athens or Thessalonika or whatever.
.

So there’s the delicious bottom line is that the Hedge Funds are tanked, by and large tanked, save those few, very few, that are working with that kind of stratospheric , assets-to-burn money. Redemptions will not be forthcoming for so many, if not most, of these funds that it will, IMO, be :roll: “the” financial story of 2012, as the key “notional” edifice of hedge funds, their invincibility, gets rocked in plain vew, like a Carnival Cruise-ship in the Mediterranean..

Well those sociopaths certainly deserve each other.
Corpse abuse and urination at the big announcement?
Others declining only out of mere….. modestly?
Barry comes to mind.

Anyways, If Speaker Beef-suit, the fat-for-a-Boteroesque figure Newt is to cut into Romney in South Carolina, he’ll have to get shitty with Santorum. Imagine googling that. Tho at this point it doesn’t look like the Newtster is going to get over in SC, I’m not convinced that’s his payday-endgame anyways, my working assumption since he got the 5 million from Sheldon Adelson is his services are retained to contain Paul from any possible breakout and that he’ll be around for a while. …. my .02 anyways….

Did you see that ABC finally, after it is reported the network had an internal wrangle over E T H I C S of all things, will air portions of the Mary Ann Gingrich interview tonight on Nightline. I plan to watch… as this lousy marriage divorce whatever has hung around now for a long time.

So much for my .02! Oh that IS interesting.
Maybe they’re out to get him!
Plenty more .02’s where they came from!

Hmm, I see the advance now and it is getting some serious billing.
Oh I’ll definitely watch it. If they are going to do a take-down I just hope it is COMPLETE.
I loathe Gingrich, always have, saw him as one of the few true clinical narcissists in Politics.
I mean there’s Barry, of course.

Like nicknames, metrics, visual impressions, military references.
Like “Little General Napaleon Winky”, or some such.
How disappointing, and for two academics! LOL, Or when he was pouting, (when is he not?) the coaxing, confidence building talk of
BIG MR ELEPHANT DONG or whatever, Christ I don’t know, but it might explain the HUGE FONT routine over at her place that I’ve been wondering about for years.. LOL.

So.

At the age of 86, Noam Chomsky remains as active as ever in his work as a world-renowned political dissident and pioneering linguist. He has also opened a new chapter in his life, recently celebrating a one-year anniversary with his new wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, his second marriage. Chomsky discusses the joys of newfound love and why it is a "pri […]

Noam Chomsky weighs in on the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States, calling it a response to the unresolved consequences of slavery and racism dating back hundreds of years. "[Slavery] is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege," Chomsky says. "Is there a slave museum in the United States? The first one is just b […]

Following its election in January on a pledge to confront the austerity program that's decimated Greece's economy, the Syriza government has faced a major pushback from international creditors led by Germany. Days after Greece secured a four-month extension to a loan package in exchange for new conditions on its spending, Noam Chomsky says the Euro […]

World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discusses why National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be welcomed back to the United States as a hero and why those who authorized the government surveillance he exposed should be on trial, not him. Chomsky also argues that while mass surveillance has been ineffective i […]

The Islamic State might be the best-funded radical Islamist group, perhaps in history, but the coalition air campaign that’s targeting its oil-refining operations and military assets has begun to damage…Click to Continue »

At the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, speakers advanced Iran as an existential threat and sought to downplay differences between Israel and the US while demonstrators were arrested outside

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the chamber was moving toward debate on a bill that would require President Barack Obama to submit any final nuclear deal with Iran for Congress' approval.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday against accepting a nuclear deal with Iran that would be a "countdown to a potential nuclear nightmare" by a country that "will always be an enemy of America".

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's advisers would recommend he veto a Senate resolution to overturn recent National Labor Relations Board reforms if the measure were to reach the White House, his administration said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bipartisan talks on a bill to streamline the passage of trade deals through Congress are "stuck" over Democratic demands, the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance said on Tuesday.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.